Georgia Hosts Rare Competitive US House Election with Ossoff-Handel Runoff

Since 1964, the average victory margin in a Georgia U.S. House race has been 50 points; just 1 of the last 69 races since 2008 has been decided by less than five points

The notion that ‘all eyes are on Georgia’ for a U.S. House election is, to be sure, a bit of a rarity for the state as Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel square off in Tuesday’s high profile and expensive 6th CD special runoff election.

Polling has been extraordinarily tight for the runoff, with Ossoff generally on top, within the margin of error, and neither candidate able to eclipse the 51 percent mark.

That suggests the race will be decided by a few points at most.

Over the last five cycles since 2008, only one of 69 elections to the chamber in Georgia has produced a victory margin of less than five points (Democratic Congressman Sanford Bishop’s 2.9-point win over state legislator Mike Keown during the 2010 Republican tsunami) with an average victory margin of 52.3 points.

Since redistricting and reapportionment in 2012, Georgia’s U.S. House races have largely been blowouts, with the 42 races over the last three cycles decided by an average of 57.9 points and one-third of the races uncontested by one of the major parties.

The only competitive races during this span were in former Blue Dog Democrat John Barrow’s 12th CD – with the incumbent winning by 7.4 points over state legislator Lee Anderson in 2012 and losing by 9.3 points to businessman Rick Allen in 2014.

So just how unusual is it to have such a political barn burner in the Peach State?

Smart Politics examined the nearly 675 general and special U.S. House elections conducted in Georgia since 1900 and found that just 19 of these were decided by less than five points (2.8 percent) and only 34 by single digits (5.1 percent).

Of course, prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Republican Party rarely even fielded candidates in the Deep South and each of the four closely-decided elections to the chamber in Georgia from 1900 through 1962 (those with victory margins in the single digits) were battles between fellow Democrats in special elections:

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